Image: 1858 Gustave Le Gray la batterie Royale à Brest

Description: The Recouvrance cape in Brest with the upper Royal Artillery Battery and below it the horseshoe-shaped battery. Scan of a albumen print from a 315 x 405 mm collodion glass negative. The Royal Battery is visible on this map: File:Carte de Brest - ca 1700 - Bibliothèque Nationale de France - Btv1b8439976x.jpg This is one of the photos in a series made by Gustave Le Gray during a visit by Napoleon III to Brest when he toured French ports. The tour was notable and has been the subject of many paintings and engravings. At the time, Le Gray was an official photographer for the Second French Empire (see his biography). He had an impromptu access to this military site, the Royal Battery, and it is probably the only image from this angle. It is made in a very descriptive style, originating from the heliographic vocation and thus it gives us an inventory of places connected with the "art of war" (architecture and artillery). Le Gray was not only a photography pioneer (in the sense of it as a separate art), he was also one of the first photographers who through his work contributed to document and gather information about historic monuments, an encyclopedian in his own way.
Title: 1858 Gustave Le Gray la batterie Royale à Brest
Credit: Troyes, musée des Beaux-Arts D.46.19.590
Author: Gustave Le Gray
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No